Rants

As the spring came to an end, I found myself at a crossroads in my triathlon career. For the past year, despite the world’s best training, I have struggled to execute consistent performances in my races. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was letting down my coach and myself, and that it was time to either walk away from the sport or make a change. For the 18 months, I have had the incredible opportunity to live at home and work with Siri Lindley and her amazing team of athletes. I wouldn’t be where I am in my career without Siri. She has been an inspirational mentor and an incredible friend since she gave me my start in the sport in 2006, and she was gracious to take me on after my season-ending crash in 2013. Coming back to train with Siri was incredible. She has an enthusiastic energy and is completely dedicated to getting the best out of all her athletes every day. On the performance side, Siri’s record as a coach in the US is unmatched; her athletes dominate on the world stage from ITU Olympic distance to the Ironman world championships. Siri is an amazing leader.. But, I couldn’t seem to turn the training into race results. And, while I have no doubt we would figure it out eventually, I also know that my time in the sport is limited. So, after some very deep reflection, I made the incredibly difficult decision to go back to what had proven successful in the past. Now, I’m here in Switzerland and back under the supervision of Brett Sutton who coached me through the most successful years of my career. Brett, while with a different style than Siri, is equally accomplished having produced countless triathlon world champions over his coaching career. I approached Brett Sutton for the first time at the end of 2010 when I was at another crossroads in the sport and considering retirement. This time, I was at a similar point and knew that if he was willing to take me on his squad that Brett would do his best to help me find the consistent race form that I had under his tutelage in 2011-2013. Brett agreed to help guide me through my final years in the sport. This change will not allow me to live full time at home, but with the support of my husband, who has once again gotten behind me, we’ll both give triathlon a few dedicated years before I hang up the tri kit. This was not an easy decision to be taken lightly. In addition, this change has no guarantees. However, in the words of Arthur Ashe, “Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.” When faced with an impasse, sometimes the only choice is to change direction, push onwards,...

There is one tiny but all-important piece of equipment that holds the majority of my weight for the majority of an Ironman. That is my saddle. Saddles are a very personal. In fact, it may be the most personal decision you make in the sport. For me there is only one. It is the Cobb Fifty Five JOF. I have been racing triathlon since 2006 and when I started I didn’t realize how vital this one small piece of equipment is to being comfortable and fast on the bike. So, tried many of them – and I struggled. I recall having to tilt my saddles downward or swapping them every few weeks just to recover my sore spots. In 2011, someone introduced me to John Cobb, and I rode my first Cobb Saddle. The revelation was immediate. It was different. My “delicates” were happy. In the past three years, I have always used the Cobb PLUS saddle and I loved it. But, I kept testing. Jon recommended that, because of body and the way I am positioned on the bike, I should test the new Fifty Five JOF model. I immediately felt that is was the best fit for the way I am positioned on the bike now. It’s amazing how much a simple decision like this one can affect results. So, while I know the decision is personal, I encourage you to test as many saddles as you can and never overlook this vital piece of equipment. It is really the one thing between you and the road for all those hours of training and racing. You should love it the way I love the Fifty Five...

This post was written for Witsup.com and appeared there in March. Note from Stef at Witsup that appeared at the start of my piece: “No one has said “whoopsidaisies” for fifty years and even then it was only little girls with blonde ringlets,” (Notting Hill – 1999), UNTIL, a multiple Ironman champion admitted to having a propensity for being a klutz. Said multiple Ironman champion, Mary Beth Ellis, is one of the, if not THE toughest cookies on the triathlon circuit. She started the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii last year with a broken collarbone! They don’t get much more Tonka-Tuff than Ellis! However, while she is tough, she is also accident prone. Here she shares a few injuries and incidents that are a little left field, but we’re sure a few of you have encountered as well… I have a dirty secret. Here goes. I am a klutz. I have had more than my fair share of injuries from the legit breaks and strains (which I won’t discuss in this article as I’ll leave that to the true medical professionals) to the bizarre triathlon battle scars. In this article, I’ll touch on the minor, trivial, and often absurd so that you can hopefully learn something or at worst just laugh at my travails. Swimming injuries When lane lines attack – My run-ins with the vicious lane line span from a minor dust-up to a near death collision that left me beached like a whale on its rotund body. I tried retaliating by takin down the lane line with my paddles, but I still lost. I ended up doggie paddling away a torn up mess. Next time I’ll show up to the pool with a knife and threaten to cut it – surely that is enough to intimidate any recalcitrant lane line and keep it in its place. When fellow H20 users attack – I’ve been on the receiving end of a severe bashing from a fellow swimmer in a shared lane and in the open water. To avoid this, pick the lane without the crazy tall windmill swimmer whose arms span seven feet if possible. If not, then practice your open water swim skills in the lane and pull your arms in tight every time you pass your lane mate/foe. In open water training or in a race, there is an easy fix. Just swim away from the aggressive bashing swimmers. In a long race, it pays off to even stop and swim to the other side of the course just to get away and not spend four kilometres getting hit every stroke. When UFOs attack (unidentified floating object) – The “funniest” swimming incident for me was being hit in the open water by a sailboat. Yes, a rogue sailboat! It cut through our swim pack and made a beeline for me. The centerboard left a nasty hematoma...

When you find your partner in life you stop looking… Why? Well, because you have found the person you want to be by your side for the rest of your life. I feel the same way about my sponsors. When I find what I think are the best products, I will do whatever it takes to keep these partnerships. Yet, I know plenty of other professional athletes who choose to swap shoes and bike and wetsuits and nutrition, year-after-year, chasing money. I don’t claim my way is the right way, but I tried the alternative early in my career and sacrificed performance as a result. Simply, my philosophy is to choose the products that work best for me first. It makes me happy because all the money in the world won’t help on race day if you have an under-performing product. And, while most of the high-end triathlon products are good, that doesn’t mean they are the perfect fit for me. So, how do I define “best for me?” It hasn’t been easy. But, here’s a tour of my training and racing essentials: Cervelo Cervelo P3 or P5, for example, have been my bike of choice the past three years. After riding Cervelo, I could not go back to any other brand. It is no surprise that Cervelo has the best cyclists in the sport riding their bikes. When athletes have to invest in their own bikes, they choose Cervelo, and I think that’s because Cervelo constantly reinvests in research and engineering to ensure that they have the most aerodynamic, responsive, and lightest frames on the market. In an Ironman event, you spend most the day on the bike. I want to know that the bike I am riding is the best out there, and I want to know that the people behind it will help me optimize my performance on the bike and use my experience to shape the future of their triathlon bikes. TYR As a swimmer, I am picky about swim gear. So, I have used TYR goggles and swimsuits for years. I always preferred their goggles to any other brand and would buy a new pair for every race. And, their speed suits fit around the chest and shoulders better than anything else I’ve tried. In fact, after several frustrating speed suit issues, including ripping one hours before Ironman World Champs, I actually switched to TYR’s Torque Elite swim skin at my own expense before making them an official partner. Now, I’ve been lucky enough to have them on my team for the past two years, and I wouldn’t recommend anything else. ON Running I first tried ON running shoes at the end of 2012 and wasn’t sure I liked them. They were so different from anything else I had run in. Now, after racing and training in the shoes for the past year, I...

Original article on xtri There is an epidemic among the professional triathlete ranks, and I fear it is spreading. From blogs to race reports to twitter feeds, my compatriots are lamenting the difficulty of their life as if they have a tortuous job working on a chain gang. This constant hum of ‘woe is me’ self-pity is starting to worry me. I am not immune and have on occasion blamed others or circumstances for my own shortcomings. However, I have been lucky to have coaches who have taught me the importance of taking personal responsibility. When I started triathlon, I worked with Siri Lindley and more recently have been coached by Simon Lessing. Both have taught me an invaluable lesson for all athletes namely taking control of one’s own destiny and accepting responsibility. In 2006, I started training for triathlon and was fortunate to learn some important lessons in self-reliance early in my career. First, in one of my early races, another competitor clobbered me in the swim and tore off my goggles. At the finish line, I was complaining that this happened and it ruined my race…..insert dramatic music here… but my coach just looked at me and said that is racing suck it up and deal with it. In another instance, also during my first year as a triathlete, I learned the athlete’s responsibility to know the race course. As a compulsive first year pro, I drove every bike course the day before the race. I am embarrassed to admit that as a rookie I also tried to memorize all the street names at every key intersection. As a result, except the leader who had a vehicle escort to follow, I was the one of the only athletes to take the correct turn on the course. Since I had driven the course the day before the race, I didn’t even glance at the traffic cops stationed along the course to direct traffic. Apparently, the cops were sending the athletes on the wrong way on the course. Although I am no longer as compulsive, I still believe it is the athlete’s responsibility to know the course. You can’t depend on volunteers or anyone else out there to tell you where to go. It is not their job to know the course it‘s our responsibility. In the last two years, I have continued to benefit from my early lessons and received additional insights into the importance of taking responsibility. For example, more recently in 2008 a few weeks before the Olympic trials, I was in a bad bike crash in a world cup race New Zealand. During the drafting bike leg, one Austrian athlete, hit the front wheel of another Austrian competitor while we were in a high speed decent causing her to go down hard. I was in the wrong place in the pack and was taken out...

Sometimes I really really hate the wind…especially when I am on my bike and not feeling great. Today was one of those days in Boulder, the wind was blowing at 30mph and gusting up to 40mph. There is something so futile and frustrating about riding into a wind and especially getting upset with the wind (wind rage as I call it). The first hour and a half of the ride, I really was angry at life at the wind at everything. But once I got into the efforts in my ride, I forgot about the wind and focused on going hard. It is amazing how once you stop obsessing about something you can’t control like the wind; it seems to suddenly be a non-issue. I am sure there will be wind rage in the future but maybe next time it won’t take me a whole 90 minutes to get over my blow-hard anger and just focus on the...